Learning in the Microcosmos Martin Lindner Research Studios Austria Studio Microlearning & Microinformation Environments Innsbruck/Salzburg .

Learning in the Microcosmos

Martin LindnerResearch Studios Austria

Studio Microlearning & Microinformation EnvironmentsInnsbruck/Salzburg

www.microlearning.org

Standards for Microcontent-based Working & Learningin New Digital Media Environments

Stuttgart, Open Forum, September 5, 2008

“There is a world of difference between the modern home

environmentof integrated electric information

and the classroom.”

(In 2008, the gap is bigger than ever.)

Marshall McLuhan (1967):

“e-Learning is dead!”

“Did you hear?

e-Learning is Dead.

That's right... dead. Shot down in the prime of its life.

Six feet under. Kaput.“

Jay Cross (2003)

Jay Cross had coined the term„e-learning“ in 1998,

fascinated by the possible impactof the Internet on

human-centered learning.

He got frustrated when the term was misused in the following years,When it became just a new buzzword label for „Computer-based Online Training“

& the transfer of courses & classrooms into virtual „Learning Management Systems“.

„The Ideal Classroom“ (presented as such in the Web)…

… the matching ‚Ideal Office‘ …

… and a model for „eLearning 1.0“

US Airforce

Adapted from Edward Tufte‘s famous graphic about MS Powerpoint

Macro-organizational Learning

Emergence: The connected lives of ants, brains, cities, and software

„Google Learning“

?

New Learner

OPENNESS

OPEN SPACE

Micro-Information Workers:Point of Presence, Continuous Partial & Peripheral Attention

(After getting connected, mainstream workplaces do not feel that much different from this geek cockpit.)

E-Learning 2.0: Early vision of a „Personal Learning Environment (PLE)“

Scott Wilson (UK), 2005

Jay Cross now prefers to speak of „Informal Learning“.

(But the concept has close connections to Stephen Downes‘ „e-Learning 2.0“-meme.)

2007

In Web-driven digital media environments, people are in fact already practicing (informal) microlearning.

Willingly or not.

How can we design for this situation?

A Global Digital Climate Change

David Weinberger, 2002

Small Pieces Loosely Joined

“[The Web is ] a collection of ideas, none longer than can fit on a single screen.

… small nuggets pointing to more small nuggets.”

“We've discovered in the last few years thatnavigating the web in meme-sized chunks

is the natural idiom of the Internet …“

Anil Dash, 2002

Introducing the Microcontent Client

“Microcontent is information published in short form,with its length dictated by the constraint of a single main topic

and by the physical and technical limitations of the software and devices that we use to view digital content today. “

Anil Dash, 2002

Introducing the Microcontent Client

This causes new dynamics within the „Semiosphere“

„Semiosphere“: a term coined by Jurij M. Lotman, referring to „Biosphere“.

Circulation of microinformation is heating up.

This will fundamentally affect our future lives!

(This is somehow more than just a metaphoric illustration – since the 1980s, Al Gore has actually been both

a prophet of Global Warming and an evangelist of the Internet.)

Glaciers are melting.

Glaciers are melting.

Deserts are growing.

Deserts are growing.

Creatures are driven from their habitat.

MICROSOFT OFFICE

FILES & DOCUMENTS

FIXED-LINE TELEPHONY

DESKTOPAPPLICATIONS

Microsoft Office

MICROCONTENT

discovered in 2001

GOOGLE & THE WEB SHREDDERING

MACROCONTENT

WLAN, LAPTOPS& MOBILE DEVICES.

MOBILE PHONES.

SHORT CALLS

EXPLOSIONOF THE E-

MAIL INBOX

MS Office devastated

MICROCONTENT

discovered in 2001

The Microcontent Office

A System of Microcontent Circulation

drops

trickles & flowpools

clouds

“Media is no longer something we do, but something we become part of.”

(It is not tools anymore …)

People working and living with digital micromedia are swimming, rather than navigating,

in a sea of microcontent and streams of microtasks.

This also changes the way Information Workers learn.

Microcontent.The stuff the Web is made of.

“We've discovered in the last few years thatnavigating the web in meme-sized chunks

is the natural idiom of the Internet.“

Anil Dash, 2002

Introducing the Microcontent Client

… memes: self-replicating units of cultural information

Microcontent is a virus

self-contained

the smallest units of meaning and attentionthat can stand for itself

elementary

individually addressable to be easily re-used and re-mixed

appropriate media format

appropriately formatted to work as building block in different cultural patterns and individual mindsets

Dash‘s microcontent definition (paraphrase): Human processed information

self-contained

the smallest units of meaning and attentionthat can stand for itself

elementary

individually addressable to be easily re-used and re-mixed

appropriate media format

appropriately formatted to work as building block in different cultural patterns and individual mindsets

Dash‘s microcontent definition (paraphrase): Human processed information

appropriate media format

appropriately formatted to work as building block in different cultural patterns and individual mindsets

STANDARD

self-contained

[some relation to object-oriented programming]

elementary

individually addressable to be easily re-used and re-mixed

appropriate data format

appropriately formatted for integration in different applications and services

Dash‘s microcontent definition (paraphrase): Computer processed information

self-contained

[some relation to object-oriented programming]

elementary

individually addressable to be easily re-used and re-mixed

appropriate data format

Dash‘s microcontent definition (paraphrase): Computer processed information

appropriate data format

appropriately formatted for integration in different applications and services

STANDARD

The evolution of microcontent is a complex feedback phenomenon –

it can not be reduced neither to software nor to humans

(Microcontent is about circulation, not just transmission.Standards have to be built for enabling feedback and

emergence.)

The Micro-Web is about emergent patterns ofuser-generated and user-enriched content

appropriate media format for human attention

appropriately formatted to work as building block in different cultural patterns and individual mindsets

appropriate data format for computers

appropriately formatted for integration in different applications and services

Emergent standards:microformats, RSS/Atom,tagging APIs…

Emergent standards:blog posts, microbloggingtemplates, delicious items …

But for now e-Learning primarily is formatted neither for humansnor for the Web, but for macro-organizations & -institutions.

appropriate format for organizationsFormatted to stabilize macro-organizational frameworks:

- macro-organizational training (formal, top-down)- macro-organizational calculation of costs- macro-organizational management control

If we want to design standards for “Next-Generation eLearning”, we have to understand & bear in mind the nature of

microcontent-based information work.

In micromedia environments, knowledge takes on the form of clouds.(Microcontent being something like small drops of vapor.)

“Personal Info Cloud”

Thomas Van der Wal,

2005

www.vanderwal.net

„… all kinds of information chunks in our digital life take on the form of

digital lifestreams …

… leaving behind a stream-shaped cyberbody, like an aircraft's contrail, as we go”

David Gelernter, The Second Coming – A Manifesto (2000)

Learning in microcontent-based environments should feel like this

drops

flowpools

clouds

[email protected]

Thank You